AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



POPULAR DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE 

GOVERNMENT. 


INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

BY 


HON. GEOEGE E. HOAE, LL. D., 

PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 
[Read at the annual meeting, December 27,1895.] 


(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1895, pages 21-43.) 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, 

1896 . 







AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


POPULAR DISCONTENT WFI'H REPRESENTATIVE 

GOVERNMENT. 


INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 


BY 



HO]S^. CtEOKGE E^OAR, ll. d., 

PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


[Read at the auiiual meeting, December 27, 1895.] 


(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association lor 1895, pages 21-43.) 



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1896 . 

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POPULAR DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 






Inaugural address by Hon. George F. Hoar, LL. D. 


I congratulate tliis society upon the auspicious beginning 
of the twelfth year of its useful and patriotic work. We can 
claim our full share of the credit for the interest in American 
history which is growing up all over the whole country. The 
researches to which the members of this society devote them¬ 
selves, if they are to be of any value, must deserve the strict 
and austere epithet Study.” Certainly no study can be nobler. 
In the natural sciences there is more and more a division of 
labor. Students in every locality gather the natural produc¬ 
tions of the place into museums and cabinets ready for exami¬ 
nation and comparison by the master who discovers and makes 
clear the general laws which embrace all places. Agassiz had 
in that way a thousand helpers and disciples. Something much 
like this is going on all over the country in the established 
societies for antiquarian and historical research, which supply 
the material for the writers of national history. These men 
gather the facts for the investigator on a larger scale, as a 
quarryman or hodman collects the material for the builder of 
the palace. They gather local traditions, rescue manuscripts 
and old pamphlets from destruction, and chronicle the events 
of municipal and local history. They discover facts by minute 
investigation. 

Next to them comes the historical student who extracts 
from local histories the material which is important to national 
history, and performs a like function on a larger scale. 

Both these men perform a service of great importance and 
dignity, not to be undervalued anywhere, least of all to be un¬ 
dervalued here. But the great historian must be a genius of 
a far higher order. He must be capable of seeing clearly the 
great forces which determine the current of human affairs. 
He musthavetheprofound judgment and insight of thephiloso- 

21 




22 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


plier. He must have the imagiuatiou of the poet, not exaggerat¬ 
ing or distorting, or falsifying or clouding, but at the same time 
idealizing the national history with which he deals. He must 
have the artist’s gift of portraiture. He must be himself great 
enough to comprehend greatness of personal character, heroic 
enough to comprehend heroism, and must be so penetrated 
with the sentiments of honor and duty as to recognize them 
when they are the governing forces in national or in personal 
conduct. It has been said—I know not whether truly or no— 
that no portrait painter can put into the face of his subject a 
loftier character than his own. But I am sure that no biog¬ 
rapher or writer of history will ever do justice to a great char¬ 
acter of whose quality he does not himself partake. 

I^ow to the historian, to whichever of these two classes he 
may belong, from the compiler of the genealogy of the Smith 
family to Thucydides or Tacitus, truth, inexorable truth, is the 
first essential and requisite. It can not be for the advantage 
of any people to substitute romance or fiction for veritable 
history, or to bring up its youth on pleasant self-delusions. 

But surely there is as much of falsehood in the spirit of 
detraction as in the spirit of indiscriminate eulogy. The judg¬ 
ment of contemporaries, of friends, of associates, is of very 
high value indeed. The judgment which, after the first burst 
of public sorrow for the death of an eminent man and after 
those tributes in which censure, however deserved, does not 
find a place, is commonly of the highest value, and expresses 
what usually turns out to be the permanent judgment of his¬ 
tory. Sometimes, though rarely, records leap to light which 
reverse that judgment and overthrow the ill-placed statue. 
But there seems to be an unusual fondness of late for over¬ 
throwing reputations of dead men, by reviving the obscure 
calumnies which were despised by their contemporaries when 
they were living. Some single copy of a forgotten newspaper 
or the letter of some enemy is exhumed. The writer of his¬ 
tory exults in his discovery of what was probably the inven¬ 
tion of contemporary and despised malice as if it had been his 
own. A single such example is enough to deface the brightest 
page. But what shall be said of a history that is made up 
of them? 

In what I have to say this evening I wish to be distinctly 
understood that I am pleading for no departure from absolute 
verity anywhere. But I wish to protest against what I deem 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 23 


a prevalent and most pestilent form of historic falsehood to 
which some writers in this modern time seem to me specially 
addicted, that of undervaluing, underestimating, falsifying, 
and belittling the history of their country and the characters 
of the men who have had a large share in making it. 

There is an inscription on the beautiful monument of our 
first president, George Bancroft, in the city where I dwell, 
which declares: 

‘^He made it tlie high purpose of a life 
Which nearly spanned a century, 

To trace the origin of his country, 

To show her part in the advancement of man, 

And from the rare resources 

Of his genius, his learning, and his labor, 

To ennoble the story of her birth. 

Mr. Bancroft well deserved this eulogy, which he would have 
himself preferred to any other. 

The first duty of the historian, as I have said, as the first 
duty of every man in every relation of life, is to absolute truth. 
Yet if in anything the love of country or a lofty enthusiasm 
may have led him to paint her in too favorable colors, the sober 
judgment* of time will correct the mistake. l!fo serious harm 
will have been done. Certainly no youth was ever yet spoiled 
by reverencing too much the memory of his parents. If any¬ 
thing is to be pardoned to human infirmity, it is surely better 
to err on the side of ennobling the country's history than to 
err on the side of degrading it. It is certainly better to have 
deserved the epitaph I have repeated 5 it is on the whole more 
to be desired than to have it said of him that he spent his cen¬ 
tury in showing that his country’s part had been to set men 
backward, to exert an evil influence on mankind, and that he 
had written her history standing at the mouths of her sewers, 
and had spent the rare resources of his genius, his learning, 
and his labor” to preserve the memory and the example of 
whatever of evil he could find in her. 

There are few instances in which the dilettante spirit is 
more mischievous than in historical pursuits. There are few 
sciences whose votaries are more likely to deceive themselves 
by convincing themselves that they are engaged in a serious 
occupation when they are little better than idling. There is 
no study in which the devotion of a trained intellect, inspired 
by the love of excellence, is more likely to be of service to the 


24 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

country and to mankind. The preservation of history is an 
honorable achievement 5 the preservation of a great history is a 
great benefit to mankind. Everywhere, the loftiest stimulant 
of the child is the example of the father. There is scarcely 
a record left of heroic action which was not inspired by the 
memory of the heroism of ancestors. It is this that it is the 
true function of the historian to preserve. It is the memory 
of virtue that should be immortal, and it is best that the 
memory and example of evil should perish. 

The man who presumes to write the annals of a great, brave, 
and free people should himself have a soul penetrated by the 
lofty spirit of courage and freedom. He must be accustomed 
to the vocabulary, he must be stirred with the emotions, which 
belong to liberty. When we read Tacitus, or Thucydides, or 
Xenophon, or Clarendon, or Macaulay, we feel instantly that 
men are narrating great actions who are capable of great 
actions. The love of truth is the first condition. But the 
power to comprehend, to understand, and to see truth is equally 
indispensable. No great poet can be translated adequately if 
the translator’s language have but a mean and petty vocabu¬ 
lary. Milton’s lofty note, “Hail, horrors, hail!” may i)erhaps 
have been translated faithfully enough by the Oohime vous 
portez-vous, mes horreurs, in the Erench version. Certainly 
the translator did quite as well as some of our modern writers 
of American history who have undertaken to narrate some of 
the great transactions in our history or draw the portraiture 
of the men who have conducted them. 

I wish to speak to-night of one or two causes of popular dis¬ 
content with our representative Government. I suppose that 
the flame of patriotism never burned brighter nor clearer any¬ 
where than it does in the bosom of the youth of America to-day. 
This is not only true of those who are born and bred on Ameri¬ 
can soil, but, with the exception I am about to state, men of 
other races and other blood seem to catch the American spirit 
as soon as they breathe the American air. 

Yet when I consider the tone of the press, of men of letters, 
and even some writers of history when they describe her, I am 
sometimes astonished that any American youth can love his 
country at all. Every morning, Sunday and week day, there 
comes from the press by the million, by the hundred million, 
what constitutes the staple reading of nearly all of our people 
who can read at all. These publications are largely the organs 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 25 

of one or another i^olitical party. They represent the party to 
which they are opposed, as base, selfish, intriguing, or at least 
narrow and wrong headed. Yet it is unquestionably true that 
nearly all the voting poi)ulation of the country belongs to one 
or the other of these political organizations. If those political 
organizations be base, the American people are base. If the 
trusted leaders of those political organizations are base and 
mean, then the country is base and mean. 

We are restive under foreign criticism j we resent, angrily, 
the common speech of the Englishman; we are disturbed by 
the bitter, contemptuous utterances of English magazines like 
the Saturday Eeview, and newspapers like the Times. 

Is it strange that the papers of foreign countries should 
adopt the opinions that are constantly uttered by our metro¬ 
politan press'? Is there any offense of this sort in London 
which can not be matched in Hew York ? 

Some of our men of letters are not much better. When 
they speak of the country in the abstract, they adorn her with 
graces and virtues proportioned to their own poetic fancy; but 
when they come to speak of what she does, of what she is, 
and of the men to whom she gives her confidence, w hom she 
commissions to act for her, who are picked and chosen for the 
great transactions by which alone her character can be made 
to appear, it is curious what a Setebos or Caliban they make of 
her. Indeed, there could not possibly be written a more curious 
chapter in the history of human mistakes and delusions than 
one which would record the opinions of men of letters of their 
contemporaries and of their times—men from whom come to 
us the great inspirations to courage and to duty, whose noble 
trumpet blasts stir the soul to its depths, who, in the time of 
trial, nerve us to great deeds, and to great sacrifices, who con¬ 
sole us in great sorrows and great suffering—it would be ludi¬ 
crous, were it not pitiful, to see how at fault is their judgment 
of the men with whom they are living, and the transactions 
which are passing under their own eyes! 

How often the best men are pursued with their scorn, and 
the vilest crowned with their praise! How they seem, some¬ 
times, to accept everything that is base at its pretenses, and 
judge everything that is excellent by its defects! 

Wordsworth’s Essay on the Convention at Cintra is one 
whose power and genius Edmund Burke himself might have 
envied; yet in it he demands the recall of Wellington from the 


26 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


command of the English army and his humiliation in the eyes 
of Europe. It was when the great soldier was bravely stand¬ 
ing at bay, in Spain, against the conqueror of Europe, and per¬ 
forming the greatest actions of the career which culminated 
at Waterloo. 

Eobert Browuing^s ^^Lost Leader”— 

Jlist for a handful of silver, he left uS, 

Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat. 

We shall march prospering, not through his presence J 
Sons may inspirit us, not from his lyre; 

Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod. 

One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels. 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! — 

which our poetic youths still like to quote whenever anybody 
who is entrusted with any share in the conduct of this Gov¬ 
ernment fails to take their sage advice, was written of William 
Wordsworth. 

Carlyle describes his countrymen in the nineteenth century 
as twenty million of people, principally fools.” He has a 
passing word of contempt for George Washington. He finds 
nothing that was not contemptible in the spirit that animated 
our youth in the civil war. Then he holds his pistol to our 
heads and demands that we should fall down and worship 
Frederick and Napoleon, and proposes to himself, if he should 
find time in his old age, the deification of George III. Even 
Carlyle, when he speaks of his “ twenty million fools,” is rather 
more amiable than Tennyson with his ^‘many-headed beast.” 

The men who despise humanity most, take its worst exam¬ 
ples for their heroes. This tone of the cynic has spread from 
the newspaper and the poet, to the grave and serious writers 
of history. 

It is not merely that men of foreign birth, whose hearts were 
never stirred in their boyhood by the stimulant traditions of 
the early history of America, are taking a considerable share in 
contemporary literary work. The intellectual habit of which 
they set the example is infecting men of native birth. It 
seems to be thought, in some quarters, that a sober and trust¬ 
worthy history of the United States must only be a chronicle 
of the discarded and rejected scandals of all past generations; 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 27 


that the men whom their own times deemed most worthy are 
to be counted unworthy, and that the men whom their own 
times rejected are now to be accepted. 

The story of the growth of this country from a little space 
by the seaside, until its temple covers a continent and its por¬ 
tals are on both the seasj of the settlement of the West, of the 
acquisition of Florida, of the purchase of Louisiana, of the 
exploration of the Eocky Mountains and of the Columbia 
Eiver, is only the story of a generation of horse-jockies and 
swindlers, who covered the continent and drifted aimlessly into 
empire. John Adams was hot-headed, quarrelsome, vain, and 
egotistical 5 Jefferson was a poor, impractical philosopher, 
timid and dissimulating; Madison was a poltroon and coward ; 
Clay was profligate and a gambler; Monroe was feeble and 
insignificant; and Jackson an unscrupulous, reckless, fighting 
frontiersman. 

In what I have said of the habit of our great poets and 
scholars to disparage the public life of their own generation 
let me not be misunderstood. We shall make a graver mistake 
than they do if we discard them as leaders and teachers. I 
believe no men need them more; and there are no men more 
thoroughly inspired by them in the warfare of life than the 
men they so much and so mistakenly revile. 

John Stuart Mill records that the English Eadicals used to 
be very angry with him for loving Wordsworth. “I used to 
tell them,” he said, Wordsworth is against you, there is no 
doubt, in the battle which you are now waging, but after you 
have won, the world will need, more than ever, the qualities 
which Wordsworth has kept alive and flourishing.” 

That man is to be pitied, however far removed may be his 
calling from the domain of poetry, however close to the ground 
may be the daily duty of his life, however sober or prosaic may 
be the field of his studies, who shall fail to keep his soul in 
full communication with the electric current which comes from 
those to whom belongs the blessing and the eternal praise: 

They give us nobler loves and nobler cares, 

The poets, who on earth, have made us heirs 
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays.'^ 

We will still look to the scholar for our abstract trufch; we 
will still look to the poet for our ideal of virtue; but, in esti¬ 
mating the character of practical men, we will respect the 
opinion of practical men. 


28 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


In forming onr opinions of those who have conducted nations 
through great trial and peril, we will accept as best of all the 
judgment of those who went through great trials and perils 
with them. We will preserve the independence of our own 
judgment; we will rather trust our own practical experience 
when we are dealing with current and contemporary history. 

I believe that the conduct of public affairs is growing bet¬ 
ter, purer, and wiser from generation to generation. I believe 
that, in the main, the motives by which our public men are 
governed in the administration of national, State, and local 
affairs are honest and upright. 

1 think that you should distrust the shallow philosophy that 
would ever attribute base motives to the great actions of 
human history, or teach that its mighty currents are deter¬ 
mined by greed, selfishness, avarice, ambition, or revenge. 

The pure and lofty emotions are ever the great and overmas¬ 
tering emotions. It is a maxim of the criminal law that evi¬ 
dence of previous good character is of little account in trials 
of murder. The temptation which will lead a man to that 
extremity of crime which violates the sanctity of human life 
and incurs the curse of Cain and risks the extreme penalty of 
the law, sweeps away the ordinary restraints of morality as 
the avalanche of the mountain sweeps before it the hedges of 
the peasantry in the valley. So, we are glad to believe, the 
love of country, the supremest passion of the human soul, 
possesses equally the men who are noble and the men who are 
ignoble in the conduct of ordinary life. 

A famous general of the late war told me that he found 
among the papers of a distinguished officer who had been ter¬ 
ribly wounded and lost a limb in battle, and who, before he 
recovered from his wound, went to the front again and gave 
up his life as cheerfully as he would have gone to his bridal, 
this charge against his father’s estate, of which his mother, 
the widow, was then the representative: 

The estate of ., To ., Dr. 

To making fire 17 mornings, at three cents a morning,. 51c. 

I like to believe, as I have said, that when the country 
utters its voice it is something higher and nobler than the 
voice of the individual citizen. When that lofty harmony is 
heard, the little discords are silent. The Middlesex farmer 
had his ignoble traits. I knew, in my boyhood, some survivors 





DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 29 


of the generation that opened the Revolution. I was familiar 
with their children. They were sharp at a bargain. I am 
afraid that, if you had bought a load of wood of some of them, 
you might have found some crooked and rotten sticks under 
the foreboard. But they were up before the sun, at Concord. 
They were not thinking of a bargain when they sold their lives 
at Lexington and Bunker Hill. 

Tennyson saw the same thing when he fancied the common 
people of England rising against the French invasion. 

“For I tliink if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill, 

And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the 
foam, 

That the smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter 
and till, 

And strike, if he could, but a blow with his cheating yardwand, 
home.” 

If the critical and fault-finding temper to which I have 
referred be not justified by the truth, you will agree with me 
that its effect must be infinitely mischievous and pestilent. 

I do not see how the love of country can long abide toward 
a country which is altogether unlovely. No man can feel a 
noble pride in a base history. I can not understand why 
these fault-finders, who can not find ten righteous men in 
our Sodom or Gomorrah, do not get out of it before the fire 
from heaven comes down. 

I think every historical investigator will perform a useful* 
service if he shall help satisfy the American people, especially 
the coming generation, that these men are mistaken. 

It is time for the American youth to settle for himself whether 
there be any substantial truth in these stories. Is this the 
true portraiture of our country? Are these the true features 
of her whom we have conceived as 

“The glorious lady with the eyes of light. 

And laurels clustering ’round her lofty brow ? ” 

Is the being we love with the supremest passion of our souls 
altogether unlovely ? Is the being we would gladly die for unfit 
to live with? Is the being we have imagined to ourselves a 
thing of beauty and of joy, simply an aggregate of all false¬ 
ness, and greed, and meanness ? 

Did the Pilgrim at Plymouth—did the great-hearted Puritan 
of Salem and New Haven—did the liberty-loving enthusiast of 
Rhode Island, the sturdy founders of New York, the Quaker 
of Pennsylvania, the Catholic of Baltimore, the adventurous 


30 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


cavalier of Jamestown, tlie woodsmen who, in later genera¬ 
tions, struck their axes into the forests of this continent, the 
sailors who followed their prey in the Arctic and Antarctic 
seas—did the men of the Eevolution, and the men who fought 
the great sea fights of the war of 1812—did the men who con¬ 
ducted the great debates, in the Senate and in the forum—did 
the judges who pronounced the great judgments which fixed 
the limits of constitutional authority and of public liberty— 
did the splendid youth of 18G1 devote themselves—did Wash¬ 
ington live—and did Lincoln die—only in order to build and 
to preserve this noble and stately palace for a den of thieves? 

I can not go very deeply into the subject in the time which 
is at my command. I can only touch one or two matters; but 
I hope we may be satisfied that a great deal of the public 
impatience with our representative government is ill-founded, 
and that some of our more plausible complaints are hasty and 
inconsiderate. 

There are two classes of complaints which I think are likely 
to make an impression on good men, and especially upon young 
men, which, if not altogether without foundation, are at least 
greatly exaggerated. 

First, the complaint of what is called Party spiritand 
second, the impatience of the slowness, fickleness, and inefli- 
ciency of legislative bodies. 

Perhaps the charge against the conduct of public affairs in 
free States to-day, which makes most impression upon consci¬ 
entious men, comes from the existence of political parties. It 
is said that we substitute party government for popular gov¬ 
ernment, party spirit for public spirit, and the interests and 
advantage of party for public well-being. Under these malign 
influences, we no longer vote for the best men for places of 
honor and trust, but take the candidates of our party, regard¬ 
less of character or capacity. 

Now, let us see, if we may, what is the principle on which 
the just authority of party rests. What is the true dividing 
line Avhich separates the domain of party from that of inde¬ 
pendent action? If we can find it, 1 think Ave shall see that 
the general instinct of the people in our day is sound and true, 
and that our government by party instrumentalities is not 
only the best, but the only government consistent with free¬ 
dom or practicable under existing circumstances. 

An unorganized government is nothing but a mob, and it 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 31 


makes little difference wketker it be a mob of ruffians or of 
archangels. 

“ If every Atheuian citizen had been a Socrates,” said one 
of the authors of The Federalist, every Athenian assembly 
would have been a mob.” 

I conceive that the man who conscientiously acts with his 
party is as truly independent in politics as the man who, 
according to Lord Dundreary’s proverb, “ffocks by himself.” 

The man who surrenders his opinion, either as to measures 
or to candidates, to that of the organization or association to 
which he belongs, honestly believing that in that way, on the 
whole, he can best serve the public welfare, acts in so doing 
according to his own conscience and judgment as thoroughly 
as the man who refuses to combine with other people for the 
promotion of public ends. 

What are political parties? A political party is an organi¬ 
zation of men for the purpose of securing the executive and 
legislative power in the State, that it may carry into effect in 
the government of the State certain principles upon which it is 
agreed. 

No principles, sound or unsound, can be carried into effect 
in government without previous concert on the part of the 
men who hold them. 

No candidate, good or bad, can be chosen to office without a 
previous arrangement to support him. 

The government can not be committed to any man, or organi¬ 
zation or class of men, unless some organization precede the 
action of the people from whom they derive their power. 

Political parties are the instruments by which such princi¬ 
ples are carried into effect, such candidates are nominated and 
chosen, or such organizations placed in power. 

Now, the question. On what conditions and under what 
circumstances can a man be independent in politics? is, in 
substance, this: On what conditions and under what circum¬ 
stances can an honest and patriotic man accept and act upon 
the judgment of a political party, instead of acting on what, 
but for that judgment, would have been his own? 

Under what circumstances ought I to vote for the man I 
most prefer for Governor or Eepresentative, instead of voting 
for the man selected for that office by the majority of the 
political party with whose principles I agree? 

You will agree with me, I think, that this is not a ten-minute 


32 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.' 

or a sixty-minute question. It is one of the most difficulty as 
it is one of the most important, questions that can come to an 
American citizen in the course of his life. 

My statement must be very brief. But I wish to precede 
what I have to say about it to-day with saying something 
about another subject which will seem to you, perhaps, quite 
remote from what ^ve are talking about, but which seems to me 
to have a very intimate and near connection with it. 

That subject is the true conception of a country or State. 
Now, I hold the country and the State to be a moral being to 
which may be ascribed the qualities of wisdom, conscience, 
justice, courage, good faith, reason, nobility, or the reverse, as 
much as to any man or woman. These qualities are very dif¬ 
ferent from the mere aggregation of such traits in the indi¬ 
viduals that make up the country or State. 

The words Switzerland, France, England, Rome, Athens, 
Massachusetts, America, convey to your mind a distinct and 
individual meaning, and suggest an image of distinct moral 
quality and moral being as clearly as do the words Washington, 
Wellington, or Napoleon. I believe it is, and I thank God 
that I believe it is, something much higher than the average 
of the qualities of the men who make it up. We think of 
Switzerland as something better than the individual Swiss, 
and of France as something better than the individual French¬ 
man, and of America as something better than the individual 
American. In great and heroic individual actions we often seem 
to feel that it is the country, of which the man is but an instru¬ 
ment, that gives expression to its quality in doing the deed. 

It was Switzerland who gathered into her breast at Sein- 
pach, the sheaf of fatal Austrian spears. It was the hereditary 
spirit of New England that gave the word of command by the 
voice of Buttrick, at Concord, and was in the bosom of Parker, 
at Lexington. 

The citizen on great occasions knows and obeys the voice of 
his country as he knows and obeys an individual voice, whether 
it appeal to a base or ignoble, or to a generous or noble passion. 

Sons of France, awake to glory,” told the French youth 
what was the dominant passion in the bosom of France, and it 
awoke a corresponding sentiment in his own. Under its spell 
he marched through Europe and overthrew her kingdoms and 
empires, and felt in Egypt that forty centuries were looking 
down on him from the pyramids. But, at last, one June morn¬ 
ing in Trafalgar Bay there was another utterance, more quiet 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 33 


ill its tone, but speaking also with a personal and individual 
voiee— 

England, expects every man to do liis duty.” 

At the sight of Nelson’s iinuiortal signal, duty-loving Eng¬ 
land and glory-loving France met as they have met on many 
an historic battlefield before and since, and the lover of duty 
proved the stronger. The England that expected every man 
to do his duty was as real a being to the humblest sailor in 
Nelson’s fleet as the mother that bore him. 

It is this personal quality in States and nations, as individ¬ 
ual, moral beings—objects of love, and fear, and approbation, 
and condemnation having a personal, moral quality, separate 
purposes, separate interests, different public objects, sepa¬ 
rate fashions of behavior and of public conduct—which justi¬ 
fies the arrangement in the Constitution of the United States 
for an equal representation of States in the upper legislative 
chamber, and explains its admirable success. 

The separate entity and the absolute freedom (except for 
the necessary restraints of the Constitution) of our different 
States is the cause alike of the greatness and the security of 
the country. 

It is one of the most wonderful things in our history that 
the separate States, having so much in common, have pre¬ 
served so completely, even to the present time, their original 
and individual characteristics. 

Khode Island, held in the hollow of the hand of Massachu¬ 
setts ; Connecticut, so placed that one would think it would 
become a province of New York; Delaware, whose chief city 
is but 25 miles from Philadelphia, yet preserve their distinc¬ 
tive characteristics, as if they Avere States of the continent of 
Europe, whose people speak a different language. 

This shows how perfectly State rights and State freedom are 
preserved in spite of our national union; how little the power 
at the center interferes with the important things that affect 
the character of the people. 

Why is it that little Delaware remains Delaware in spite of 
Pennsylvania, and little Khode Island remains Ehode Island 
notwithstanding her neighbor, Massachusetts! 

What makes the meadow flower its bloom unfold? 

Because the lovely little flower is free 
Down to its roots, and in that freedom bold. 

And so the grandeur of the forest tree 
Comes not from casting in a formal mold, 

But from its own divine vitality,” 

H. Doc. 291-3 


34 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

And so it is that little Delaware or little Ehode Island is as 
much the political equal of giant New York or Pennsylvania 
as little Wendell Holmes was the political equal of Daniel 
Lambert or Daniel Webster. 

Now, I have made this preface of mine a good deal longer 
than the body of the discourse. There are certain political 
actions of the individual or citizen Avhich do not in the least 
affect the action of his country as a moral being. There are 
other actions which have no moral quality or significance of 
their own, except as they enter into and affect the moral con¬ 
duct or the character of the country or State. Now, as it 
seems to me, the 'question of the propriety of independent 
action is to be resolved by this test and touchstone. 

Take the matter of supporting candidates for office. I hold 
it to be a good thing to narrow and not to widen the field of 
controversy between different political parties, and that their 
controversies should, so far as possible, be confined to the 
principles about which they differ. There is a large class of 
officers whose duties are purely executive, which require only 
honesty, fidelity, and executive capacity for their performance. 
The political opinion of the official has nothing more to do with 
the discharge of his duties than his religious opinion or the 
color of his eyes or hair. 

I hold that it is desirable to remove these offices from the 
domain of party conflict, and that a man, in recommending 
a person or supporting a person for such office, is not bound 
to surrender his own judgment as to the superior fitness of 
the candidate to the political party with whose principles he 
agrees. I think, further, that the making of political opinion 
a condition of holding such office is of evil effect, as tending 
to inspire political activity by the hope of such rewards, and 
so as bribing the people with the offices created to serve them. 

Next, I do not see how an honest and patriotic citizen can 
support measures, or ought to support measures, which he 
thinks of evil influence, merely because the political party 
with which he generally acts declares itself in favor of them. 
Of course, in matter of detail, matter of seasonableness as to 
time, there is room for compromise, and there is room for such 
a deference. But for it a political party, organized and asso¬ 
ciated for the purpose of causing certain principles to take 
effect in legislation, never could accomplish its purposes, and 
a majority would be without value or power. So that I hold 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 35 

to the largest independence of the individual conscience and 
judgment in the matter of those measures of legislation or 
executive action which are to alfect the interests of the people, 
and still more'as to those which are to determine the moral 
quality and character of the State or nation. 

We must also all agree that no party obligation can compel a 
man to do, or to help to do, an action which he deems unjust, 
or to refrain from doing an action, or helping to do an action, 
which is required by justice. But, in regard to the executive 
officers of whom I have just spoken, I do not see why an inde¬ 
pendent citizen is not justified in doing what he can to place 
in those offices the men whom, after the best reflection and 
investigation, he thinks- the best fitted for them, having only 
that reasonable deference to the opinion of his party which is 
due from all of us to the opinion of other men whom we respect. 
I do not see why he may not, in that way, if he choose, honor 
so far as he can the men whom he chiefly delighteth to honor. 

But there is a class of public officials, such as Presidents, 
Governors, Members of either House of Congress, and Members 
of the State legislature, who are chosen not for what they 
themselves are, not to honor or decorate, or crown the brows 
of individual men, but for what the country, or State, as a 
moral being, is to do through their votes. 

In regard to that class of officials, I have never been able to 
apiirove or to respect the opinion of the man who classes 
himself as an independent in politics. I do not approve 
or respect the notion, as applied to that class of officials, of 
the man who says he is going to vote for the best man with¬ 
out regard to party. It seems to me that in so doing he is 
indulging his preference for an individual at the cost of dis¬ 
honoring his country. 

If in what I said a little while ago there be any truth, and 
if there be any difference between right and wrong in the con¬ 
duct of the State—if there be such a thing as the attribute of 
righteousness, justice, honor, virtue, courage, generosity, hero¬ 
ism, as ai)plied tp this being whom we call our country, and for 
whose good name and honor, if need be, we are ready to die, 
how is it possible that we are justified in making her unright¬ 
eous, unjust, cowardly, mean, and impure, because of something 
in the personal quality which we like or dislike in the char¬ 
acter of the man whom we commission to do it. 

Let us take an illustration from current politics. There are 


36 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


men who believe as I do, that the most valuable, most precious 
right of property that belongs to an American citizen is his citi¬ 
zenship j that its crowning attribute is the elective franchise j 
who believe that the worst socralisin, the most dangerous rad¬ 
icalism, the most wicked attack on vested rights, is that which 
deprives a man of his franchise or the fruit of his franchise by 
fraud or crime, or debauches it by a bribe ; who believe that 
the blended and mingled wickedness of all anarchy, all social¬ 
ism, all disorder, all disorganization is contained in crimes 
against the ballot. 

The question whether I like or approve the law which has 
vested these rights in the poorer or less educated classes of 
our citizens is a question I have nothing more to do with, while 
they remain vested, than the question whether I like the law 
of descent or the title to property under which our wealthy 
men own their real estate. It is the law of the land. Every 
good citizen is bound to maintain and defend it whether he 
like it or no. 

Am I to put in a place of power the man who approves these 
things, who sympathizes with them, by whose vote my coun¬ 
try is to crush out with its armed heel the rights of citizens, 
because he is a man more amiable or more faultless in his pri¬ 
vate life than the man by whose vote the country will do what 
is righteous and just in the matter? Some of you think, as I 
do not, that the protective tariff is a policy of gross injustice; 
that it plunders the poor for the rich; that it plunders one 
part of the country for the benefit of another; that it is organ¬ 
ized monopoly, robbery, and plunder; and that the country 
that enacts it is the servant of monopoly, and plunder, and 
private greed. 

Can I ask you to support a man who does not think so, and 
who is an accomplice himself and makes his country an accom¬ 
plice in all these things, because he is a man more agreeable 
or more free from the faults which disgrace, or possesses more 
of the virtues which adorn private citizens, than a competitor 
who is sound in this matter? Your vote for governor, or Pres¬ 
ident, or legislator, national or State, means simply, I desire 
that my country shall pursue the path of honesty or of dishonesty^ 
of prosperity or adversity^ as I see it. 

The question of the individual quality of the person so com¬ 
missioned is, compared with this, a secondary, subordinate, 
and trivial matter. 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 37 

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean that you 
should vote for a man if you can not trust him; I do not mean 
that you should vote for a man who is rotten^ or corrupt, or 
base. You can not have honesty in the country with rulers 
who are venal and corrupt and profligate in their private con¬ 
duct. You will not often have such men proposed to you by 
any party in the country for high public offlces. When they 
are, the time has arrived for the independent in politics. 

Every man who comes into the national legislative service 
will, I think, confirm what I say. He meets, perhaps for the 
first time, men who have been represented by the partisan, 
or so called independent, press as corrupt and self-seeking 
schemers, men who disgrace their country and their constit¬ 
uency, seeking public office to gratify selfish ambition, and 
using it after it is obtained to promote their personal fortunes. 
He finds them faithful, industrious, seeking the public good— 
men with many faults and foibles and, rarely, vices, but men 
to whom the suggestion of a corrupt motive would be received 
with as swift indignation as would have been a proposition to 
George Washington to pick a pocket; but, I believe, if you 
will reflect, you will find a large majority acting upon these 
principles, and that they have acted on them in the main from 
the beginning of our constitutional history. You will find, if 
you penetrate below the anger, and heat, and excitement of 
political discussion, and the misrepresentation and misjudg- 
ment which attend political controversies, that an honest 
desire for the public good and also a wise comprehension of 
what is for the public good have been the prevalent forces in 
guiding the great currents of our history. 

I suppose you have heard all your lives, and will hear all your 
lives, constant complaints of the slowness, dullness, fickle¬ 
ness, and inefficiency of representative bodies of Congress, 
State legislatures, and municipal councils. The press is full 
of it. Writers of history who agree in nothing else agree in 
tliat. It is the burden of common speech everywhere. Nobody 
ever praises them except the men who belong to them. Yet 
the legislation of a free people alike determines and records 
their history. You can not separate the character of the people 
from the character of the men whom they deliberately, from 
.year to year, and from generation to generation, elect to repre¬ 
sent them. Men whose blood would fly to their cheeks at a 
charge of baseness, or wickedness, or cowardice, made against 


38 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


their country, or their State, or tlieir city, will constantl in 
discourse attribute these qualities to the chosen bodies by 
which, and by which alone, their country, or State, or city 
speaks or acts. 

Now, I think there are several things to be borne in mind in 
considering the justice of such criticism. The nation is the 
largest business organization that exists. It has more than 
100,000 employees.* It must not only provide for managing the 
Army and Navy, Post-Office, tax collections, custom-houses, 
courts of justice, lighthouses, Life-Saving Service, Land Office, 
Patent Office, Indian tribes, pensions. Territories, elections, 
currency, and foreign affairs, but it must enact the laws by 
which all these are to be governed, and provide the executive 
officers by which they are to be administered. It must also 
determine the laws, and keep abreast of the age in enacting 
them, by which every great concern of a national or interna¬ 
tional character is regulated. Commerce between the different 
States, commerce with foreign nations, railroads, telegraphs, 
telephones, inventions, manufactures depend not only for their 
security, but for their prosperity, on the constant suiDervision 
and control exercised by the National Congress. 

Would you think it strange if a board of directors having in 
charge the least of these vast subjects had to sit all the year 
round and toil from morning till sundown and from sundown 
far into the small hours of the morning? Would you think it 
strange that they took a good while for discussion and decision 
of that? 

Consider how our National Congress is made up. Its mem¬ 
bers represent a constituency covering a territory and having 
interests as various as all Europe with all its empires and king¬ 
doms and republics. Suppose that there were a convocation 
or conference representing all the States of Europe, called 
together for the single purpose of conferring upon this difficult 
and subtle question of using gold and silver as a currency and 
a standard of value. The question has taxed the resources of 
the i^rofoundest intellect among mankind from the earliest 
dawnings of civilization. Suppose such a body were to confer 
even without authority to decide. We should think six months 
a pretty brief period for the discussions of such a body. 

But, it is said: ‘‘Your Eepresentatives and Senators come 
together with their minds made up, and the wishes of their 
constituents well known. Why don’t you take a vote and 
the majority decide the matter and put a stop to the public 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 39 

anxiety But, suppose it happens that-ainong tlie men repre¬ 
senting 44 States and 70,000,000 people, there be more than 
two opinions on a question concerning wdiich there are one 
hundred opinions among the people and among scholars and 
scientific men, and that neither of these opinions happen in 
the first instance to be found with a clear majority. You have 
got, in that case, to discuss and reflect and have experimental 
votes, and committees and compromises till you find some 
common ground for harmony—not perhaps the best solution, 
but a practicable solution of your difficulty. 

Consider, in the next place, that the mischief of a mistake 
is irreparable. The individual, the business corporation can 
change its mind in the light of experiments, and can retrace a 
step as easily as it took it. But there is no such possibility to 
a body clothed with the functions of national legislation. 

Next you are to consider that these iieriods of time which to 
individuals and to common men seem so long are really brief, 
compared with the duration of the mighty national life. The 
mushroom grows in a night to perish in a day. But this oak 
of ours adds ring to ring, slowly and imperceptibly. Years, 
sessions of legislative bodies, terms of Presidential office, gen¬ 
erations of men count but as minutes, are but the pulsations of 
an artery in the mighty national life. This mighty being, an 
aggregation of 70,000,000 lives, may well take twelve months to 
draw its breath. 

The processes, whether of nature or history, are slow, or they 
have led to nothing x)ermanent. Do you not suppose that the 
mushroom, if it could think, would look with infinite impa¬ 
tience and scorn at the unchanged appearance of the oak under 
whose shadow it had sprung up in an hour? 

You remember when the lawyers who had come from the 
ordinary courts of justice to take part in the impeachment of 
Warren llastings before the British Parliament cited some 
of their precedents and attempted to hurry the august pro¬ 
ceeding, Burke told them that it was as if the rabbit which 
breeds four times a year should attempt to prescribe the period 
of gestation of an elephant. 

I am willing to take any period in the legislative history of 
any free people—England, the United States, the Netherlands— 
and compare it with any period that maybe selected under the 
most prosj)erous and flourishing despotism and see which has 
done most for human happiness or human progress. 

Take our Continental Congress, which existed as a body 


40 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

clotlied witli political* power for the fourteen years from its 
assembling in 1775 to the inauguration of Washington in 
1789, or, indeed, it would be more proper to speak of’it as 
lasting only until the formation of the Constitution in 1787, 
when its functions practically ended. It is a habit into which 
intelligent and patriotic historians have fallen to speak with 
contempt of that body as ‘‘sluggish, hesitating, timid, and 
inefficient.” 

But just think foy a moment of the difficulties under which 
they labored. They were the representatives of thirteen colo¬ 
nies, independent and separated governments, having as little 
intercourse with each other and as little knowledge of each 
other as we have with and of the nations of Asia to-day. 
They had no power to levy taxes, but only to recommend them j 
no power to pass a vote without the consent of nine States, 
and no power to make a law to which any penalty could be 
attached for its enforcement. Ifc was a difficult, three days’ 
journey from New York to Philadelphia. My grandfather, 
who lived in New Haven, and was a member of the Conti¬ 
nental Congress, used to ride horseback from Philadelphia to 
Perth Amboy, and then take a sloop to New York and another 
sloop from New York to get home to New Haven. I have a 
letter of his in my possession to his wife in which he says that 
he hopes to leave Philadelphia the next Monday morning and, 
if he has a favorable journey, to get to New Haven on Satur¬ 
day night. 

There were a few newspapers, published weekly, uncertain 
post-office service between a few of the large towns, and their 
communications during a great part of the way interrupted 
by the British possession of New Y'ork and the Hudson Eiver 
below West Point, of New Jersey, of Philadelphia, of York 
Eiver, of parts of North Carolina, and of Charlestown at dif¬ 
ferent parts of the war, while British men-of-war were hover¬ 
ing on the coast. 

There was a feeling of distrust by an agricultural people of 
new measures and of all legislation in which strangers were 
to have a share. 

Now, in those twelve years not only did our fathers main¬ 
tain, except as to the parts of the country which were debata¬ 
ble ground between two contending armies, peaceable and 
orderly government, the administration of justice, punishment 
of crime, the collection of debts, which were State matters, but 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 41 

ill the Continental Congress they wrote a chapter of political 
history of which their children may well be prond. 

They produced at the outset those great State papers—the 
Address to the King, the Address to the People of Ireland, 
the Declaration of Independence—which commanded the admi¬ 
ration of Lord Chatham, who said, ‘^When your lordships 
look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you 
consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you can not but 
respect their cause and wish to make it your own. For myself, 
1 must avow that, in all my reading—and I have read Thucyd¬ 
ides, and have studied and admired the master states of the 
world—for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of 
conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no 
nation or body of men could stand in preference to the general 
Congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Eome 
give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude 
upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain.” 

They summoned Washington to the command of the armies; 
they stood firm amid every discouragement; they resisted alike 
the power and the blandishments of Great Britain; there was 
scarcely a Tory or a traitor among them. Those stout hearts 
never flinched. They put on the seas, with the help of individ¬ 
ual enterprise, a warlike power which, before the French alli¬ 
ance, sent the rate of marine insurance up to 28 per cent and 
made a long continuance of the war an impossibility. They 
selected Franklin and John Adams as their diplomatic agents 
abroad, and through them negotiated the alliance with France 
and Spain. They won in the contest for Independence. They 
enacted the Ordinance of 1787. They called the convention 
which framed the Constitution, most of whose members had 
been members of the Congress, and took steps for inaugurating 
and setting it in motion. 

Kow, I would like to have some of our historical critics tell 
us what twelve years of legislative history anywhere they can 
l)roduce in which such results were accomplished with such 
instrumentalities. 

Daniel Webster, whose historic sense was almost unerring, 
and who certainly had a lofty standard of excellence, says: 

The first Congress, for the ability which it manifested, the principles 
which it proclaimed, and the characters of those who composed it, makes 
an illustrious chapter in our American history. Its members should be 
regarded not only individualIj", but as in a group; they should be viewed 


42 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


as living pictures, exhibiting young America as it then was and when th'> 
seeds of its public destiny were beginning to start into life, well described 
by our early motto, as a being full of energy and prospered by heaven: 

‘^Non sine Dis, animosus infans.’^ 

The detractors of popular representative government are 
apt to point at the Shays rebellion in Massachusetts, early ^ 
in 1787, as indicating the feebleness of the State and national 
authority. Well, it is true that, after eight years of war, the 
people were poor and suffering, and that the due process of 
debt collecting was interfered with for a short time. But 
Sluiys’s rebellion ended, I believe, with only two or three men 
slain and the life of no single rebel taken by the authorities 
after it ended. There was little property destroyed beyond a 
hen roost. There was scarcely a woman frightened. 

Compare that with the Gordon riot in London, in 1780, with 
its vast conflagration of property, with its destruction of life, 
and the terrible vengeance of the British law. Compare it 
with what was going on in France in that year and the years 
that followed, of the drama in which the old monarchy of 
France went down. 

I am willing to compare our representative Government at 
its worst with any monarchic government under which the 
authority of the monarchy is really felt in supremacy over the 
expression of a represented and controlling popular will at its 
best, and risk everything that I hold dear and precious on the 
result of the comparison. 

Now, my friends, I hope you do not think I have come up 
here to ask you to listen to a few generalities and boastful 
utterances. It is a very serious question to any American 
Avhether his love for his country is a sentiment which has its 
root and its foundation in a solid respect and honor. If it be 
true, as the critics of the London Saturday Eeview and of the 
London Times and their New York imitators are telling us 
from day to day and from week to week, that these represent¬ 
ative governments of ours are but an aggregation of base 
men, seeking base, personal ends, governed by low and sordid 
motives, and that this condition of things is growing from 
year to year worse and not better, then your country is not a 
fit object of your love. You can not be grateful to the fathers 
who have bequeathed to you these institutions, and you can 
have no rational hope for the children to whom you hope to 
deliver them. 


DISCONTENT WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 43 

But it is not true. My life for thirty years has been given, 
in a humble way, to the public service. I have known inti¬ 
mately, through and through, the men whom the people from 
all the States of the country have intrusted with the conduct 
of public affairs. 

You can not be one of sixty or eighty men, shut up together 
in the same room for twenty years to debate and deal with the 
most exciting subjects of human interest, without knowing 
prett}^ well the temi)er and character and quality of your asso¬ 
ciates. There is a good deal of human nature in all of them. 
They are subject to the passions of anger, to the infirmities of 
impatience and of ambition. They meet each other under 
circumstances tending to excite rivalry, jealousy, distrust, and 
often hasty and passionate judgment and speech. 

And yet, I am sure that among the men of all parties and of 
all shades of opinion on public questions, of all sections of the 
country, the men who are not governed in their public conduct 
by an honorable love of country and an honorable desire to do 
their best for the highest interest of the people are the rare 
exceptions and not the rule. And, in this respect, there has 
been a steady and constant and certain improvement. There 
are a few exceptions. But the men in this country who are 
clothed with legislative powers lead frugal, temperate, simple 
lives; the hours of the day and the days of the year are occu¬ 
pied by honest, hard work in the public service. 

The faults which pertain to humanity are theirs. The faults 
which pertain to men coming from the humblest places Jind 
raising themselves to places of honor and confidence and power 
are also, in large measure, theirs; but, in the main, they have 
given their country their best service, and the beneficent insti¬ 
tutions they have received from those who went before them, 
they will hand down unimpaired for a larger beneficence to the 
generations that are to come. 


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